Today, web forms are used to pass unlimited data from page to page without losing state and logged in web users are easily identifiable when completing forms or other tasks. Passing data or unique identifiers that are tied to a caller via a dialed telephone number is currently not possible due to telephone limitations. When a call center receives a call from an inbound caller, there is no way to relate that unique phone number to the user's identification on the web or in Multi-User Domains (“MUDs”) or massively multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGs). The “Click-To-Call” (“CTC”) model does not work for implementing quick and efficient virtual currency transactions because there is no method or system to correlate the phone number of the person who is calling to that person's web identity. There may exist two types of CTCs. One may require a user to supply his/her phone number (to get a call back) and the other one may require the user to call a number for initial background.
Adding a CTC capability to a website on the Internet may enable users of the website to call a service provider directly from the website. However, passing data or unique identifiers that are tied to the caller/user who uses CTC is not possible because there is no way to tie a user's account ID or unique ID (the user name the user uses on the website) to that particular user, especially when virtual currency is involved (applies to CTC systems that a user does not supply his/her phone number to). In essence, the business or service which is being called by the CTC user does not know who the exactly the CTC user is.
CTC technology now virtually always refers to a means for a web consumer to ask a website operator to call him/her. In other words, “click-to-call” would be more accurately referred to as “request-a-call,” as in “please give me a call (here is my phone number).” Obviously, therefore, CTC technology in most instances requires the web consumer to enter his/her phone number in order for the site operator or audio telephony version of an auto-responder, to place the call. This presents a privacy problem as the user may not want an advertiser to have his/her personal mobile phone number or any other personal phone number.
The problem lies in the fact that although the site operator or auto-responder may know the real identity of the person who requested the call (as in a traditional CTC). If any actionable information is known, it may be only that person's web identification or that person's user name or other identification used by that person on the Internet or mobile web site from which the click to call or request to call operation was performed. This presents a problem for quickly, securely and efficiently transferring virtual currency to that particular user because the end user may have to supply the callback number and even though the user's phone number may be captured on an inbound call (which may not be known to the average user), there is also a privacy factor involved with the user's giving up their mobile number to an advertiser.